


Catchers Drummers Anchormen

by Sab



Category: Sports Night
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Fantasy Football League, Fantasy Football Widower, M/M, Unshaven maniacs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-17
Updated: 2001-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan gets an obsession, Casey gets a papercut. (Uploaded by Punk, from you guys are just fucked.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catchers Drummers Anchormen

**Author's Note:**

> Punk remembered what I was supposed to be doing, and plus I can't tie my shoes without her.

"Oh the catchers, the drummers and the anchormen,  
the most dependable Joes that ever been.  
They squat at the plate and don't seem to mind.  
They don't play the notes, but they keep the time.  
They give all their hearts to holding the line.  
You never hear these guys say when.  
Catchers, drummers, anchormen."  
      - Eddie From Ohio, "Catchers Drummers Anchormen"

 

It started when a field interviewer talked to Alex Haas, an eighteen year old high school senior who'd been recruited by Notre Dame as a starting fullback, and was still stringing them along. "I'm waiting to weigh my offers," Haas said in an interview clip they didn't use. "There might be something better than Notre Dame."

Dan picked up the phone in the office and Casey smacked him on the shoulder and he put the phone back down again.

"Don't."

"Better than Notre Dame?" Dan was sputtering. "Better, he said."

"There might be something better than Notre Dame," Casey said. 

"They were nine and two this year," Dan said. "They've got Cory Jones and Rashon Powers-Neil lined up for the fall. Haas is an idiot."

Casey licked his teeth. "I, um, I don't know who those people are."

Dan picked up the phone again and went to hit Casey with it, but instead teetered on the edge of the desk and had to catch himself before he fell. "Just the most sought-after high school all-stars of the 2000 season," he said. "We do do a sports show, don't we?"

"At least one of us does," Casey said. "And certainly one of us has a script to write."

"Kiss me," Dan said.

"No," Casey said. "Get out of my office."

"It's my office," Dan said. He scrunched up his face and stood up, still holding the phone.

"Hang up the phone," Casey said.

"Kiss me," Dan said.

Casey kicked his feet down from the desk, swiveled the chair around, stood up, and pried the phone receiver from Dan's hand. "You're insane," Casey said.

"Admittedly," Dan nodded. "And in the most adorable way possible."

Casey had to laugh. "That's true," he said, throwing a glance out the glass wall before squeezing Dan on the shoulder. "Will you actually get to work, now?"

"Kiss me," Dan said for the third time.

"Later," Casey said, and sat down again and turned the computer on.

Dan disappeared, then, and didn't come back for four hours. When he stumbled into the six o'clock meeting, he kicked Kim out so he could sit next to Casey, and he pushed a stapled packet of computer printouts in front of his partner. "Look what I did," he said. "I'm a genius."

Casey thumbed through the pages. They all seemed to be from varying badly coded poorly written fan websites, with titles like "FANTASY RUTGERS 2001" and "THE BOYS OF TEXAS A&M" which sounded a little bit sexy. Aside from that, he had no idea what he was looking at.

"I have no idea what I'm looking at," Casey said.

"I'm building a team," Dan said. "The most fantastic freshman lineup in the history of the Fighting Irish."

"Are you building it out of papier-mache?" Casey handed the stapled packet back.

Dan snorted. "I won a bid against Oregon State. I got them Lydell Ross," he said. "They thought they'd lost him. They were having a shitty recruiting season until I showed up."

Dana shut the door and sat down, waiting for her staff to shut up.

"Does Lydell Ross know about this?" Casey asked.

"Who cares?" Dan said. "I'm a couple points away from Alex Haas, but I'll get him, even though he's an idiot. He's built like a brick shithouse."

"I think that's a phrase usually reserved for well-endowed women," Casey said.

"Are we done?" Dana asked, taking off her glasses and twirling them in a circle like a baton.

"I am," said Casey. 

After the meeting, Dan disappeared again, and didn't show up until ten minutes before airtime. He squirmed during makeup, and then kept checking his watch, running out of the room, coming back, checking his watch, and running away again. At forty seconds before air, Casey caught Dan mid-flee and pushed him into his chair. 

"What are you on?" Casey said. "And if I get you drunk, will it go away?"

"I'm in a bidding war," Dan said. "With a recruiter named Nabis-Qo. That's with a Q, by the way. And a hyphen."

"Bidding on?" Casey didn't really want to know, but he asked anyway.

"Alex Haas," Dan said. "It's a wonderful world out there. You should get involved."

"Ten seconds," Natalie called.

"Fantasy recruiting," Dan said. "Bidding on the hottest high school commodities for the best college teams."

"These high school kids aren't actually involved in this process, right?"

Dan opened his mouth to say something, but the red camera light went on and whatever it was turned into "I'm Dan Rydell alongside Casey McCall..."

&&&&

Dan had his laptop plugged in on Casey's kitchen table, and he wouldn't come to bed. 

Casey slid up behind him and ran his arms down Dan's chest, but Dan brushed him away. "I'm inches from Alvin Pearman," Dan said. "Nabis-Qo just offered him a signing bonus, but I'm pretty sure that's illegal."

"I'm pretty sure that pretending to trade actual human beings is outside the universe where legal recruiting procedure matters," Casey said.

"It is," Dan said. "It's totally bogus."

"Then come to bed," Casey said. "Let him have fantasy Alvin Pearman. You can have fantasy Casey McCall."

Dan didn't even look up. "Ten more minutes," he said. "I'm collecting playbooks to show this kid."

An hour and a half later, Casey gave up and went to sleep.

When he awoke at ten-thirty, Dan was still sitting at the kitchen table, and there was a pot of coffee on. 

"You've got bags under your eyes," Casey said, ruffling Dan's hair. Dan pulled his head away.

"I lost Pat Massey," Dan said. "To Michigan."

"Isn't Pat Massey actually _going_ to Michigan?" Casey asked.

"I can probably get him back," Dan said. "And Alex Haas is still being an idiot."

Casey went to pour himself a cup of coffee. "Take a shower," he said. "I'm leaving in twenty minutes, with or without you."

He left without Dan.

&&&&

"Have you ever heard of fantasy football recruitment?" Casey asked Jeremy over a box of donuts.

"Sure," Jeremy said. "It's a freakish underworld of computer nerds bidding on high school kids for imaginary college teams. It's a really fascinating subculture, sociologically speaking. I mean, you wonder where these people find the time."

Casey nodded. "You sure do," he said. 

Dan showed up an hour late, and Casey grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him into the bathroom.

"I'm going to kiss you, now," Casey said. "Because you asked me to yesterday."

Dan looked at his watch. "West Virgina sucks," he said. "It's because they're on East Coast time."

"You're on East Coast time," Casey said, slowly, reaching up to touch Dan's cheek.

"I'm on South Bend time," Dan said. "I'm in Indiana."

"I'm going to kiss you, now," Casey said. "In New York."

Dan let Casey kiss him, but he pulled away after three seconds, washed his hands, and fled, leaving Casey standing alone in the men's room shaking his head. 

A couple hours of this had been cute. A night of it, and Dan was charmingly insane, but that wasn't news to anyone. But now it was a work day and Casey's partner had left him standing in a men's room to go fight with imaginary people about imaginary college teams. Casey felt gypped. Embarrassed and stupid and gypped. And thirsty.

He washed his hands too, and then left for the copy room to find another cup of coffee. 

&&&&

Dan didn't go home with Casey that night, and he didn't show up at noon the next day. The day after that, he came in at four, and on Thursday he was there before Casey got in, in the same clothes he'd worn the night before and with ink on his cheek. 

On Friday, Casey came in early, and Dan wasn't there. On the wall, there was a picture of the two of them from the company Christmas party, with Casey in a funny hat and Dan draped over his lap, face up, like a ballroom dancer dipping. It was right before Dan slid off backwards and landed on his head, and there was another picture of that, somewhere, but this one was the one they'd kept and tacked to the wall, because in the glow of the string of Christmas lights, with Casey caught mid-laugh and Dan draped luxuriously over his knee, and they looked like Fred and Ginger, or maybe Ricky and Lucy. Whoever it was, they certainly they looked like people in love. 

Sighing, Casey opened Final Draft and started on today's script. He'd written a line and a half of intro when Dana came in without knocking.

"Dan's not getting any work done, I think," she said.

Casey thought a moment. "He's around," he said.

"I'm sure he is," Dana nodded. "But he's not getting any work done. The last time I saw him yesterday he was in editing trying to talk Angelo into letting him use the T3 line."

"We have a T3 line here, don't we?" Casey tried to figure out the appropriate way to deal with this.

"You're in here," Dana said. "Presumably working. Which Dan, as I said, is not. Doing."

"I'll deal with it," Casey said.

"I know you will," Dana said, but she didn't leave.

"I'm...going to finish this intro," Casey said.

"Casey."

"Um, uh huh?"

"You've written all the shows this week."

"Yeah," Casey admitted. Dana looked at him.

"There's a consensus. Among me and Natalie."

"Isn't that technically just a decision, then? Or even gossip?"

Dana sat down. "There's a consensus," she said. "That Dan is distracted. By something."

Casey exhaled. "He is," Casey said. "He's Dan. He gets excited by shiny objects."

"Natalie says she thinks he's in love," Dana said. "He looks like he hasn't been sleeping. Makeup isn't happy."

"She thinks he's in love?" Casey repeated carefully.

"Probably. Or in crush. You know how Dan gets."

"I do," Casey nodded.

"So you don't know," Dana said.

"Don't know what?"

"Who Dan's in crush with."

Casey shook his head. "Not a clue."

"You should talk to him, Casey," Dana said. "You're his best friend."

"For whatever that's worth," Casey said, more bitterly than he'd intended. Dana furrowed her brow, but then stood up.

"Great," she said. "Now get your script done. And let me know when Dan gets in."

"Great," Casey said. "You can be sure I will."

"Great," Dana said, and left.

On the air this week, Dan had been monotone, except when he was stumbling over big words like "astroturf" and "gladiator." The bags under his eyes were heavy and dark, and even when Casey would try to poke him or joke with him he'd be distant, staring off at what could only be some great fantasy recruiting website in the sky. 

Off the air, Dan was rarely seen. He'd come into the office from time to time, but if Casey was at the computer he would turn on his heel and leave again, and if Casey tried to start a conversation he would mutter something about the Air Force Academy, grab a pen or a handful of paperclips, and leave again. 

That night, after the show, Casey asked Dan to come home with him, but Dan refused. He didn't answer the phone all day Saturday, and Sunday morning, armed with bagels and the paper, Casey showed up at Dan's apartment.

Dan tried not to let him in.

"I ate," he said, peering over the chainlock at the bag from H&H.

"Let me in," Casey said.

"I'm kind of in the middle of a thing," Dan said. 

Through the cracked door, Casey could see he hadn't shaved, or slept, or even gotten out of his dress clothes from Friday. "Let me in," Casey said again. "Or I'll disown you." He held his breath, wondering if that threat had the cachet it used to carry. Dan thought for a minute, and then shut the door.

A couple seconds later Casey heard the chain slide out, and Dan let him inside.

Dan's office looked like a war room. There were printouts tacked and taped to all the walls, with circles and arrows in blue magic marker. On the floor were eight or ten similar stacks of paper around an empty space on the carpet where Dan, presumably, had been sitting. Casey set the bagels down, and very carefully started cleaning up.

"Hey!" Dan shrieked, snatching the papers from Casey's hand and giving Casey a papercut across the second digit of his pointer finger. "They're in order!"

Casey sat down, dug around for an onion bagel, and took a bite. He watched Dan reassemble the piles on the floor, chewing the bagel and sucking on his papercut a little. The Danny he'd fallen in love with -- the sharp one, the witty one, the one who made Casey tone down his flowery sentences and said "kiss me" in a low, matter-of-fact voice in incredibly inopportune places like the conference room and Starbucks -- that Danny had little or nothing to do with this unshaven maniac who was crawling around on the floor. Casey felt himself detaching, watching with the kind of awe he felt when watching big fish eat little fish or news footage of a plane crash. This strange Dan stepped delicately over his piles and sat down at his computer again, muttering something about the Kansas Jayhawks. Casey sucked his finger.

After what felt like hours of silence, Casey spoke. 

"I'm gwang to yeeve you," he said, around his finger. Then he took his finger out of his mouth and tried again. "I'm gonna leave you, Danny."

Dan didn't seem to hear, or care, and Casey felt his chest tightening. "I'm going to go home," he said. "I can't do this. I'm tired of covering for you. I'm tired of writing the show myself. I'm tired of _doing_ the show myself. And you're not a partner anymore." He was breaking his own heart, even as he said the words.

Some squeaking, and Dan's chair turned around to face Casey. "Case?"

Casey stood up, even tried to smile. "I'm taking the bagels too," he said.

Dan stood up too, on wobbly legs. He started stepping over the paper piles but then gave up and just pushed through them, falling foreward against Casey's chest. "Case, it was just - I was just fucking around."

"How long has it been since you've showered, Dan?"

Dan snuffled against Casey's chest. "Please don't go," he said. 

Casey sighed. "Look, Dan," he said. "You've got no idea what the rest of us have been going through this week. Dana and Natalie are placing bets. Jeremy thinks you're on drugs. I've used the word 'magnificent' so many times in this week's intros I sound like a Victorian poet. And where have you been?"

"Indiana," Dan said in a squeaky voice.

"Yeah," Casey said.

"I got Brian Beidatsch," Dan said.

"Brian Beidatsch sucks," Casey said with a grin. "Thomas Derricks would have been better."

Dan blinked. "You're reading the stats. You didn't know who these guys were. You're as much of a freak as I am."

Casey burst out laughing. "I love you, Danny! And I tried, man, I tried to get excited about this for you. But there's no way I'm as much of a freak as you are. Awful sorry. But you're nuts. And we've got real sports to attend to."

"I was feeling --" Dan started, picking up Casey's bagel and chewing on it thoughtfully. "I felt like an outsider. Looking at all these tight little high school boys, watching the schools compete over them. I went out for football in high school."

"You were a water boy," Casey said.

"I was a water boy."

"You went to Dartmouth."

"I went to Dartmouth."

"It's a better school than Notre Dame. And it's still Division One."

"It's Ivy League!" Dan yelped, and then pretended to find something very interesting on his bagel to start picking at. "That's, um, like, honorary Division One."

This was an old argument, and Casey gave up. "Look," he said, taking the bagel from Dan and holding Dan's hands in his. "Just give it up, okay? Come back to the world?"

"For about ten seconds, there, I was significant to the world of sports," Dan sighed.

Casey folded Dan into his arms and kissed him on the forehead. "You," he said. "Are always significant to the world of sports. Your insight, your experience, your passion and your talent are the best things you could offer, and they make the rest of us all better at our jobs. The sports world would be less without you. CSC would be less without you. I would be less without you, Danny."

"I guess," Dan said.

"Plus," Casey said, "you're renowned for your adorable self-deprecation but we all know it's just to mask your massive ego, so let it out a little. You know you're brilliant."

Dan smiled. "I am, aren't I?"

"Definitely."

"No, I mean, I'm, like, very good at my job. I'm probably better than you."

"Don't get carried away." Casey was relaxing, now that the insane recruitment paper igloo had been forgotten.

"I'm damned good," Dan said.

Casey slipped his hands around Dan's back, up inside his shirt. Dan's skin was hot, and sticky, and it twitched under his touch. "Kiss me," Casey said.

"Okay," Dan said, and kissed him.

"You should take a shower," Casey said.

"You should take one with me," Dan said.

"That was implied," Casey said.

"But one thing." Dan looked over at his computer. "I'm inches from Alex Haas. His decision is due in tomorrow at close of business Indiana time."

Casey groaned. "Dan!"

"I just want to show that bastard Nabis-Qo -- that's with a Q, you know -- that I know my shit," Dan said. "I'll throw everything else away."

"Promise?"

Dan threw his arms around Casey's neck and kissed him again. "I totally promise."

&&&&

Dana had a headset on, and it took Casey a minute to realize she was talking to him. 

"He's not here? What do you mean he's not here? He has a show in three minutes. He's not here?"

Casey reached up and pushed the headset mic away from Dana's face. "He's bidding against a guy named Nabis-Qo."

"I don't care," Dana said, bringing the mic back around to her mouth. "He has a show."

"That's spelled with a Q, you know," Casey said, grinning. "Nabis-Qwo."

Dana sighed. "Do I care?"

"I didn't even care the four times Dan told me."

"But you're telling me."

"I'm stalling."

She scowled. "Casey, we go on the air in three minutes."

"And Nabis-Qos bidding closes in --" Casey looked at his watch. "Eleven seconds. Relax, Dana. He'll be here. We had a deal."

"Do I want to know what he's bidding on?"

"I'm almost certain you don't."

"Is it going to cost the network any money?"

Casey forced himself not to laugh. "Only if he loses to Nabis-Qo and decides to bail on tonight's show."

She wasn't amused. "Casey! Is that something I should really be worrying about? I definitely don't need something new to worry about. Just tell me he's not insane anymore."

Dan, conveniently, came breezing in, and Casey shot him a smile. "He's not insane anymore," Casey said.

"I got him," Dan said.

"You have a show in fifty seconds, Dan," Dana said, and then turned to the guys in the booth. "Are we ready with VTR?"

"Cued and ready," a guy with a headset said. 

"You have a headset," Casey pointed out. "You don't actually need to shout to talk to those guys."

Dan was waving his hands around, and the wardrobe woman was fighting to keep him still so she could get his jacket on. "Don't you want to know what my recruitment package was?" he asked.

The booth guy said, "VTR in three, two..."

Casey sat down. "Not even a little bit."

Dan nodded. "Off-campus housing."

"Marvelous."

"It's the little things," Dan said, grinning. "That's what separates the winners from the losers. I told you. I know my shit."

"I'm going to kiss you, later," Casey said in a low voice.

"I'm going to kiss you back," Dan said.

"We're go in five, guys," the booth guy said.

The red light on camera 2 switched on, and Dan and Casey looked over to it in synch.

"I'm Casey McCall," Casey said. "Alongside Dan Rydell. Those stories and more when we come back, after this."


End file.
